'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎125] (160/714)

FROM KUCHAN TO KELAT -I-NADIRI 125
horizon spread the blue band of the Kara Kum (Black Sand), which
I had left little more than a week before at Ashkabad. A bee-line
due north from where I was standing would have struck the
Russian station of Kaahka, on the Transcaspian Railway, from
which, or from the neighbouring station of Dushak, a year before
my companions and I had lightly and without any preparations
contemplated an expedition to Kelat and Meshed, little recking of
the appalling stretch of country that intervened. On that
occasion we had been stopped by the Russian authorities ; 1 and I
had since travelled some thousands of miles in order to renew the
experiment from the opposite quarter. We now commenced a
very steep and prolonged descent, having to lead our horses most
of the way, the ravine breaking at times into a sheer precipice
upon our left hand. r ihe opposite side of the gorge had sloping
sides of coloured clay and marls, above which rose sandstone
pinnacles and towers ; and as we contemplated the strange and
variegated spectacle, it was as though the mountain had been
draped for festal purposes in a particoloured skirt with purple and
crimson flounces. 2 The defile was alive with partridges, in coveys
of from four to eight. They started up with a whirr almost under
our feet, but seldom flew more than a hundred yards. Indeed, they
seemed to be greater adepts on foot than on the wing, for they
scudded up the bare vertical cliffs just like squirrels. At the
bottom of the descent we followed the dried-up bed of a torrent
till, through a rocky portal, it opened upon the last valley but one
before that of Kelat. Here the telegraph poles and track diverged
to the right, but as it was now late in the afternoon, and our
animals were dead beat, we turned to the left, following the course
of a plentiful stream that ran down the valley and made it green
with chenars (the Oriental plane) and poplars. At the mouth of this
valley is a gigantic chenar springing from the base of a rock which
contains an imamzadeh, or saint's tomb. Its boughs were positively
covered with rams' horns, a favourite offering of the pious
Mussulman to the distinguished dead, and with other emblems of
reverence. After a mile and a half I reached the secluded little
village of Issurcha or Ab-i-garm (i.e. hot water), so called from
some warm springs which rise near by.
1 Vide Russia in Central Asia, p. 101.
2 I have nowhere seen such brilliant natural colours in rock and mould except
in the canon of the Yellowstone River in North America.